Not Leading Refugee Issue

World leaders approved New York Declaration on Refugees and Migrants in the summit meeting at United Nations for the first time on Monday. The declaration was designated to save lives, protect rights and share responsibility on the crisis over refugees and migrants, which appeared to be an urgent global issue. While Japan pledged a certain amount of financial support, it is still unclear whether it can take a “leading” role as its national leader boasted.

Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, offered $2.8 billion as three-year support for humanitarian support for refugees or migrants or for countries that accept them. “Japan will continue to play a leading role to bring solutions to the refugee and migrant issues by collaborating closely with the international community,” said Abe in his remarks at the summit with his notion that “the world faces an unprecedented level of refugee and migrant movements, which amounts to serious ongoing humanitarian crises.”

Abe listed Japan’s contribution on refugee crisis. “Japan, as the holder of the G7 Presidency, and as an advocate for human security, has been proactively contributing to improve the refugee crisis. JICA, the implementing agency of Japan’s ODA, has been providing assistance to Syrian refugees and host communities in various countries, such as Turkey and Jordan,” stressed Abe in his remarks. He argued that Japan’s assistance was promoting self-reliance among the refugees, raising an example in Lebanon where Japan provided vocational training to Syrian refugees and Lebanese youth.

However, Japan has traditionally been negative on accepting refugees. There was no promise in Abe’s remarks about how many refugees or migrants Japan would be accepting. In the first half of this year, Japan registered only 4 refugees out of 5,011 applicants. “Accepting refugees is not only way for contribution. Syrian refugees are suffering from economic difficulties and Japan’s continuous support is praised,” said an officer with Ministry for Foreign Affairs to Asahi Shimbun.

Registered Syrian refugees amount to 4.8 millions in all over the world. Most of them are in the countries in Middle East, including Turkey, Lebanon or Jordan. In Europe, Germany accepted 115 thousands, followed by Sweden with 52 thousands or Austria with 14 thousands. With no detailed data on it, though, it can be said that Japan’s contribution is accepting four or less Syrian refugees in the first half of this year.

Civil war in Syria is in a quagmire. Assad administration on Monday unilaterally finished truce and started air raid on Aleppo where anti-governmental power controlled. Although support for Syrian refugees is extremely urgent, contributions are not viable enough to rescue them.